I enjoy
setting up a bubble machine in the back yard and letting the bubbles
drift all over the neighborhood. They never fail to make children and
adults alike smile. Here are the results of a few tests on bubble
mixtures I've tried, comments on bubble machines, and links to other,
more complete, bubble sites. All of my comments pertain to
lightweight bubbles intended to float on the wind. Heavy, durable
bubbles for fixed displays are not addressed here.

I've coined
two terms to help compare different bubble solutions: the dip
and the blowout. A dip refers to dipping a bubble wand
into a solution and seeing how many bubbles it generates on average.
For the tests listed below, many dips of each solution were used to
build an average of how many bubbles the average dip provides. A blowout
is when a bubble machine's dipper moves in front of its fan and the
bubble solution is blown away without generating and bubbles. Weak
solutions, like Mr. Bubble, when used in the bubble machine I used to
test the solutions, had seventy percent blowouts. This is a case
where the lower the percent blowout, the better the bubble solution.
A zero percent blowout means that the solution produced bubble
continuously with no breaks in production.

Please note
that bubble lifetime is strongly determined by environmental
conditions. Bubbles are notoriously short-lived on hot, dry, dusty
days and can last for minutes on cool, shady, humid days. All of the
tests comparing solutions were made at the same time and under the
same conditions.

Commercial
Bubble Solutions Comparisons:

These
are the small bottles found in grocery and toy stores.

Mr.
Bubble, the most common brand, was the
worst of the commercially prepared solutions tried. The color is weak
and the bubbles last less than thirty seconds. I got an average of
ten bubbles per dip.

Mattel,
sold as Hot Wheels Bubbles and other names, it's preformed the same
as Mr. Bubble.

Imperial
bubble solution bubbles seem to have a little more color and last
about ten seconds longer. I got an average of 15 bubbles per dip.

Unique
bubbles where the best of the
grocery/toy-store grade solutions tested. It generated the most
bubbles per dip (up to 18) and they outlasted the other three
solutions. These worked so well I tested them against the
professional-grade solutions.

Pustifix,
from Germany, has very strong colors and the bubbles last up to one
minute. The problem is that this solution is very hard to find. Your
best bet is a high-end toy store. Actually, Pustifix should be listed
with the professional grade solutions but it's been placed here
because I've only found small bottles of it in toy stores and it's
very expensive. IMPORTANT UPDATE!!! I've
found an on-line source for Pustefix bubbles that is very reasonable
and sells up to 33-ounce bottles of it. Please look below in the
Links section for the address.

Professional
grade solutions:

These
are usually sold in quart or gallon bottles and are supposed to be
superior to commercial grade solutions. All of the following tests
used a V-9903 Mini-Bubbler bubble machine by Visual Effect Inc. As a
baseline for comparison, Imperial solution had a fifty percent
blowout rate: half of all the wands that passed in from of the air
source failed to produce any bubbles. I would have liked to test
Pustifix in the machine but the only bottle I had was an old one and
there wasn't enough of the solution to work in the machine.

Theatre
Effects This solution preformed so poorly
I have to think there was something wrong with the bottle I purchased.The
blowout rate was ninety-five percent. In other words, the solution
was so weak that it produced effectively no bubbles. At eleven
dollars a quart, I expected something much better.

Unique
had a twenty percent blowout rate. This is getting into the realm of
a very good solution.

Bubble
Pro did very well with a ten percent
blowout rate. The bubbles had good color and lasted up to forty
seconds. At three dollars for a quart bottle, it was also the
cheapest of the solutions.

Visual
Effects Bubble Juice is the best I've
ever used. The blowout rate was zero: the machine could run for
minutes (representing over one hundred dips or tests) and never cause
a single blowout. The bubbles are brightly colored and last up to a
full minute. I've even seen bubbles dry in the air and hold their
shape. These dry bubbles look like a network of spider webs
supporting a thin, transparent shell. If these dried bubbles pop in
the air, the gauzy remnant is so light that many times it will
continue to float. I believe these effects are the result of the
solution containing some corn syrup to prolong the bubble's life.
This product is difficult to find. Contact the Visual Effects website
at http://www.visualeffectsinc.com for a distributor near you. This
solution cost twelve dollars for a quart. It's available from the http://www.coolstuffcheap.com/bubjuicgal.html
website for as little as $15.95 per gallon, as of January, 2005.

(Note:
in early 2005 I received an email from a gentleman who said that
while he'd gotten good results from Visual Effects Bubble Juice in
the past, the most recent bottle he got was much poorer.
Specifically, the bubbles didn't last as long as they used to. I
purchased a 1-gallon jug of it and tested it myself. I'm sorry to say
that it was, indeed, very poor. The solution was thin and watery.
Even small bubbles popped almost instantaneously.)

NEW
GREAT SOLUTION FOUND!!!
I found
that the Gazillion Bubbles (Sold at Toys "R" Us and
Walmart) produce long-lasting bubbles that have a lot of color.

Toys
"R" Us also sells a brand labeled "Fantastic
Bubbles," made by the Billion Bubbles people. It's labeled as
being "extra thick." This solution worked okay outside but
inside under controlled conditions the Gazillion bubbles lasted ten
times longer (145-seconds compared to 15 seconds.) In March of 2006 a
32-ounce bottle of Gazillion bubble solution cost $5.49 in Walmart
and Toys "R" Us. A 64-ounce bottle cost $7.49.

Note:
The "Gold" type of Gazillion bubbles has been variable in
quality for me. Two bottles were outstanding but one was a failure:
the bubbles wouldn't blow or if they did they popped quickly. I
haven't had this problem with the non-gold types.

(Note:
While using premium bubbles greatly increases the size and duration
of the bubbles you make they can also hit the pocket book pretty
hard. It's easy to go through $10 in an hour of casual bubble blowing.)

Reality
Check:

With
the availability of Gazillion Bubbles, I decided to double-check my
evaluation capabilities. I purchased a jub of the cheapest bubble
solution I could find: Miracle Bubbles for $2.39 a gallon as well as
some new Gazillion bubbles. Inside, a bubble blown on a flat surface
using the Miracle solution only lasted 15 seconds. The same size
bubble from the Gazillion solution lasted 2 minutes, almost ten times
as long. Outside the story was a little different.

A
10-inch diameter Miracle solution bubble lasted an average of 10
seconds. A 10-inch Gazillion bubble lasted an average of 20 seconds,
better but not enormously so. The color of the Gazillion bubbles
appeared slightly brighter, but this is hard to judge.

Bubble
longevity outside is influenced greatly by bubble size. Using
Gazillion bubble solution I found that a 4-inch bubble averaged 60
seconds, a 6-inch bubble 30 seconds and a 10-inch bubble 20 seconds.
Bubbles 2-feet across were lucky to last 10 seconds.

BEEBOO
PREMIUM BUBBLE SOLUTION

This
professional grade bubble solution is sold by the people who hold
the record for blowing the world's largest bubble (105 cubic feet.)
The 16 ounces of concentrate is mixed with 14 cups of tap water to
make one gallon of bubble solution. The cost is $10.

Gazillion
bubbles, my current favorite, lasts 20 seconds outside. Beeboo
bubbles last an average of 40 seconds, so it really is a longer
lasting product. (Note: I live in the high desert where low humidity
and high levels of dust severely reduce how long bubbles last. For
most people I would expect BeeBoo bubbles to last much longer than 40 seconds.)

Beeboo
bubbles are much harder to blow using standard toy bubble blowers.
BeeBoo's special formulation works best using blowers designed
specifically for it. They offer these blowers on their site.

The
intensity of the colors was the same for both products. This is a
remarkable accomplishment considering longevity is usually linked to
thicker bubble walls, which reduces color. BeeBoo bubble solution
manages to accomplish two things at once: increase bubble life and
maintain thin bubble walls to provide maximum color.

BeeBoo
bubble solution deserves consideration for anyone wanting to blow
very large bubbles or bubbles that last a long time.

Wubbles
Bubbles!

I
spotted this package of bubble wands in Wal-Mart for $1.50. They are
standard bubble wands coated with a dry soap solution. When dipped in
water the soap dissolves enough to form a film. Held upright, I could
only get two or three bubbles per dip. By holding the wand flat, that
could be increased to five of six. The bubbles don't last very long,
but that's a fair trade off for the convenience and the fact that you
don't have to worry about children spilling soap solution on the
carpet. An important point is that if there is the tiniest bit of
fat, oil or grease in the bowl, the bubbles won't form. These aren't
nearly as good as even the cheapest jars of bubble solution.

Mrs.
April Koebert, a very dear friend from high school, sent me some
pencils with the top half converted into a small holder for a bubble
wand and bubble solution. The pencils are blue with a blue heart as
the end cap. The only writing on the pencils, which came from a Paper
Warehouse store in Colorado, is "Made in Taiwan." This is
the strongest, longest-lasting bubble solution I have ever found. The
bubbles last up to half an hour. Many times they dry and still hold
their shape. They also have excellent color. I readily recommend
these pencils to anyone needing long-lasting bubbles. There are,
however, two problems: when the bubbles pop they leave a residue and
the vials only hold enough solution for a few blows. Still, they are outstanding.

Update:
Wal-Mart started selling much larger bubble sets containing the
super-bubble solution mentioned above. For $2.00 you get 1/4 cup of
solution in a handy clip-on holder that contains a small bubble wand.
This set is called "Catch-A-Bubble" because the bubbles are
so durable that after drying in the air for ten seconds they are
strong enough to be gently gathered and stacked. They last for hours
and often don't pop even when they touch dry dirt or carpeting, sure
killers of regular bubbles. Again, the solution used will leave a
residue on clothes and surfaces.

Party
America stores sell the Lite F/X bubble Machine (model 1761) for
$40. It's an attractive, compact, easy-to-use device that runs on
either 8, AA batteries or a power cord. It'll run for ten minutes
before foaming, a problem in almost all machines, starts to become a
problem but even then it delivers a heavy stream of bubbles.

I
tried Kookamunga Catnip Bubbles. They didn't seem to interest either
of my cats and didn't last very long compared to premium bubble solutions.

Homemade
Bubble Solution Comparisons:

Contrary
to what I've read in many books and on several web sites, homemade
bubble solutions are not as good as even the poorest manufactured
solutions. Here are a few of the mixtures I've tested using distilled water:

As
these tests indicate, the bubble production of a wide range of
homemade solutions per dip is much less than even Mr. Bubbles and the
bubble life isn't any longer. Corn syrup works better than glycerine
but it has the drawback of leaving a small, gauzy residue that may
attract insects.

I
also tried adding two teaspoons of corn syrup to 3/4 of a cup of
Imperial bubble solution. In my bubble blower it increased the number
of bubbles produced per minute from 200 for Imperial by itself to
300, but this is still far below the 400 per minute rate achieved
using Visual Effects Bubble Juice.

Many
of the sources consulted for homemade mixtures suggested letting the
solutions sit overnight before using. The reason given was that this
allows certain aromatics to evaporate, making the solution more
stable. While this may be true, my own observations suggest another
reason why mixes left overnight work better than newly-made
solutions. Glycerine, corn syrup and soap are viscous and resist
mixing. I've observed long thin strands of them existing in water
even after a full minute of stirring. Used in this state, the bubble
solution isn't completely mixed, which means when a bubble is blown
from it, there will be areas in the bubble wall where the solution is
weaker and more prone to break. Letting the mixture sit overnight
allows the various components to dissolve completely into each other.
This makes the solution uniform and stronger.

Optimized
bubble
solution:

I
tried mixing one tablespoon of corn syrup with a cup of the winning
Visual Effects solution but the bubbles that resulted did not last
significantly longer. Then I mixed a tablespoon of glycerine with a
cup of Visual Effects and the sky opened up and smiled down on me!
This solution is incredeable. Some bubbles lasted up to five minutes
in dry conditions. They soared a hundred feet into the air and
floated around the neighborhood for what seemed like forever. From
now on, this is the solution I'm going to be using. (Note: This was
using the old Visual Effects formula. I don't know if it would work
as well with the stuff they were turning out after 2005.)

Bubble
Machine Comparisons:

Bubble
blowing machines range in price from $30 to $1500. They are classed
by the number of bubbles per minute they produce. Little
battery-powered units turn out 600 bubbles per minute. High-end
machines can manufacture over 25,000 per minute.

Here
are reviews for the two cheapest machines I could find:

Visual
Effects sells a nice little bubble blower (model V-9903 Mini
Bubbler), which operates off house current or two AA batteries. I've
tried many bubble formulas in this machine and the company's mix
works the best by far. Mine cost $50. You can sometimes find these
units in party-supply stores. I found that this machine runs a little
slower using batteries. This unit can also be ordered on-line from:http://www.mcphee.com/

The
second inexpensive bubble machine is the Bubble Pro Party Machine,
which cost $30. It's three times as big as the Mini-Bubbler, takes
three times as much solution to work, produces three times the number
of bubbles per minute, and runs slightly louder than the
Mini-Bubbler. Bubble solution is held in a removable tray. That
sounds like a good idea but the tray is so awkward to remove that I
didn't find it much good. Removal is made easier by first sliding the
rotating bubble wand off its axle. The one problem I had with this
unit was that the air source covered more than one bubble wand at a
time, which caused thirty percent of all the bubbles generated to be
multiples with as many as ten bubbles stuck together. These multiple
bubbles tended to fall to the ground very fast. The Bubble Pro also
tended to froth up more than the Mini-Bubbler. A solution to both
these problems is to cut out every other bubble-making ring. Of
course this means the bubble production rate is cut in half. This
machine can also be located in some party supply stores or ordered
from http://www.backroomwarehouse.com/

My
preference is (was) the Mini-Bubbler. The battery-powered option,
ability to be used with a much smaller amount of bubble solution, low
frothing, and its resistance to producing multiple bubbles more than
made up for the slower production rate of bubbles.

NEW!!!
OCTOPUS
BUBBLER
TESTED

In
March of 2009 I spotted the following little bubbler in Toys-R-Us
for $13:

It's
happy face and interestingly articulating arms make this a nice
little bubble machine for children's parties. It produces 100 or so
small bubbles per minute and appears to work very reliably. A cam
bobbles the head to add interest.

The
downsides are that the reservoir doesn't hold very much bubble
solution, there isn't a pour spout for emptying it and it's one of
the noisier machine I've tested.

Walmart
is selling a battery-powered bubble gun for $5.00. Although one of
the three I bought didn't work, the other two produce a steady stream
of bubbles. These guns can be temperamental but when they work, they
really put out a lot of bubbles. They are also much neater than any
of the other machines I've tried. They don't foam up and don't drool
as much bubble solution. The optimized bubble mixture I discuss
further down the page works much better than the solution provided
with the guns.

TWO
GREAT BUBBLE MACHINES TESTED!!!

It
seems that 2005 and 2006 are the golden years for small bubble
machines. Every other month I find a new model, each better than the
one before. In June of 2006 I found the following Gazillion bubble machine:

It
produces enormous quantities of brightly colored bubbles (when used
with Gazillion bubble solution), is the easiest and cleanest machine
to use and has a unique holder for a bottle of bubble solution that
automatically keeps the solution reservoir filled. Unlike the Billion
Bubble Machine (below) this Gazillion bubble doesn't run out of
solution after only a few minutes. Although
small and marketed as a children's toy, this bubble machine is the best
I've ever used!

IMPORTANT
UPDATE!!!

Sometime
in 2012, Funrise changed the design of this great machine and
switched manufacturers from China to Vietnam. The new design has
three small legs instead of a large round pedestal. The result is
that the new model is much easier to knock over and tends to rotate
and drift because of vibrations from the motor. Even worse, the
machine now tilts back so far the bottle is no longer held in the
holder. You have to fill the small reservoir every few minutes.
Finally, the new manufacturer appears to have much looser tolerances
on the machine parts. All the gears grind much worse than those made
in China. I purchased five of these new machines in 2013. Three
vibrated so bad they spun around and will fall off the side of a
table if not restrained. The remaining two still vibrated badly
enough to drift around some but not as bad as the first three.

Please
help save what was one of the great bubble machines. Email Funrise
(customerservice@funrise.com) and please ask them to go back to the
original design. Thank you.

Until Funrise
fixes the Gazillion Hurricane bubble machine, we have to make do with
the machine as it is. The following short video provides four ways to
greatly improve a Hurricane:

Introducing
the Bubble Storm 2000!!!

I've
always wanted a bubble machine that would fill the entire back yard
with countless bubbles. I never found one so I decided to make my
own. I started by cutting a 20-inch circle out of the center of a
card table. A three-speed fan was mounted under it blowing up through
the hole and seven high-output Gazillion bubblers were placed around
the fan blowing bubbles into the updraft.

The
result is a monster bubble system that pumps out a thousand bubbles
a second and sends them 30 feet into the sky. It's impossible to
describe the overpowering magnitude of seeing such a high bubble
density filling so much of the sky.

(Now
all I need is three more like this and I'd really have something interesting.)

Two
bubble guns tested:

The
particular Hover Bubbler I purchased (photo above) made by Imperial
Toys is the worst bubble maker I've ever used. It's supposed to pump
bubble juice up from the yellow bottle at the bottom to fill a
ring-shaped reservoir at the top. When the trigger is pull a
"D" shaped half ring pivots from its resting place in one
half of the reservoir to the other, supposedly creating an arc of
bubble film that the internal fan then blows into a large bubble. The
pump in mine never worked even though I used brand new batteries and
let it run for five minutes. Failing that, I filled the circular
reservoir manually and attempted to blow a bubble. It didn't work.
Regardless of how fast or slowly I pulled the trigger the fan was so
strong that it burst the bubble before it could form. Worse still,
the fan invariable blew a spray of bubble juice in all directions.
Perhaps the one I got was defective but even using all my experience
with bubblers I couldn't get it to work or figure out how it could
ever be modified to work.

The
Ghost Bubble machine by Peterfish toys worked better, but it too was
disappointing in many ways. This bubbler has a small built-in smoke
machine that's supposed to created smoke-filled bubbles by dipping
the yellow bubble wand at the top in bubble solution, turning it
upright, then pressing either the fast (top) or slow (lower) trigger
on the left side to engage a fan to blow the bubbles. It works... but
only after a fashion.

It
takes a full minute for the smoke maker to create enough smoke (fog
actually) to fill the chamber beneath the wand. Once filled, the wand
can be dipped and one of the triggers pressed to blow a bubble. Then
the problems start. The fan was strong enough to burst some of the
bubbles formed on my particular machine. Those that didn't were so
firmly attached to the wand that they never broke free. To get them
off I had to blow on them. Worst of all, the amount of fog in air
drawn in to inflate the bubble is so low that the resulting bubble
ends up only looking faintly cloudy. The final killer for this
machine is that you have to wait another full minute to produce
enough smoke to try making a second bubble. Failing to do this only
makes a normally transparent bubble. I doubt many children will want
to wait that long. One last issue is that this is a messy toy to use.
It's almost impossible for a child, or even me, to dip the wand and
turn the machine upright without dripping bubble solution on the floor.

Still,
this machine is not without promise. I found that once the bubble
had started to form if I covered up the air inlets the force of the
fan was reduced enough so that the bubble was less likely to burst.
The architecture of the machine makes is easy to install a plastic
tube that would allow helium to be added to the air used to inflate
bubbles so that they would float instead of sink. Finally, using a
larger fog machine to supply all the filling needed to inflate a
bubble, which would make the bubbles appear more solidly filled with
smoke. Combining both of these last two ideas would enable someone to
create smoke-filled bubbles that floated. The price to pay for this,
besides the expense of the helium, a fog machine and various plumbing
fixtures, is that the resulting unit would be large, heavy, and
awkward to use.

I'm
pleased to report that the Gazooka bubble gun by the people at
Gazillion bubbles is a winner. It produces a solid stream of 1-inch
diameter bubbles that last a long time. The handle holds enough
solution for five to ten minutes of constant bubble production, much
longer with normal on-and-off use. The fan is strong enough to blow
bubbles even if the gun is facing a 10-15 mile per hour wind.

There
are a couple of things to be aware of with this gun. First, like all
guns it's designed to be held in an upright position. Tilting may
cause spills. Also, the wand drains quickly so if you stop blowing
for more than one minute they may not start immediately. What needs
to be done is to press the trigger briefly, release it, then press it
again. That rewets the wand. The bubbles should start right away.
Occasionally the gun stops blowing bubbles even while the trigger is
being fired. If this happens, just release and repress the trigger
and the bubbles will start again. The handle holds almost the entire
bottle of bubble solution sold with the gun. The problem here is that
you almost get done pouring and because the bottle's almost empty
figure the handle was sized to hold the entire amount of solution.
Just when you think you're done the handle overflows. Not a big issue
but a messy one.

At
$13 in Wal-mart the Gazooka is reasonably priced. I give this gun a
solid thumbs-up.

Another
machine by the people at Gazillion Bubbles (Funrise Inc.) is shown below:

It's
a small but bulky unit that produces a very good stream of bubbles
and doesn't foam up.

Here's
yet another remarkable machine that has become my favorite: the
Gazillion Typhoon:

The
12-inch tall bubble machine has many new and innovative features.
First, and most importantly, it has a built-in fan that blows the
bubbles straight up instead of forward. Because of this the bubbles
remain in the air much longer. Second, it has a large base filled
with bubble solution that not only provides enough bubble juice for
up to an hour of continuous use, but acts as a heavy base to
stabilize the bubble machine. All this goodness comes at a price. The
bubbler has to be flushed with warm water after every use. If not,
bubble solution could dry out and gum up the pump used to move the
bubble solution from the reservoir to the bubble wands. As of Summer
or 2006, this machine is very hard to find either on the west coast
or even on the Internet.

The
two biggest faults with this machine are (1) the soft rubber straps
that hold the bubble juice container to the bottom of the machine pop
off easily and (2) even gentle side breezes can greatly reduce the
bubble flow because they disrupt the flow of air up through the machine.

The
Billion Bubbles machine by Kidsstuff became available March, 2006 in
Rite Aid variety stores.

It runs on 6
AA batteries and produces an excellent quantity of bubbles. The
bubbles are larger than usual and the bubble solution packaged with
the machine produces durable, long-lasting bubbles that have as much
color in them as the top-priced Pustifix solution. This machine
weighs about a pound (with batteries), measures 6-inches square and
three deep, fills and empties very easily, and doesn't seem to foam
up as quickly as the other machines I've tried.

About the only
bad thing I have to say about this little gem is that it produces so
many bubbles the bubble solution reservoir runs out of solution in as
little as five minutes. I've only had mine for one day so I can't
comment on its long term reliability, but for now it's bubbling up a storm.

Worthy of
mention is the Ultimate Bubble Toy by Gazillion Bubbles, also
available at Rite Aid stores in March of 2006. For $10 you get a
large bubble wand, a pan to hold bubble solution, a large bottle of
top quality bubble juice, and a 30-minute DVD showing bubble artist
Fan Yang doing all sorts of unbelievable bubble tricks. Even if you
don't use the bubble kit the DVD is worth the purchase price.

Gazillion
Does It Again!!!

In
June of 2008 I saw a TV commercial for Gazillion's Jumble bubble
machine ($20 at Walmart.) Unlike the Typhoon, this machine uses a
reciprocating half-circle to pull bubble solution up and over the fan
to produce much larger bubbles. Better still, an inner, smaller
half-circle blows smaller bubbles inside many of the larger ones.

This
unit is 9-inches tall, making it shorter and more stable than the
Typhoon. The straps holding the bubble solution reservoir to the
bottom of the blower are much stronger than with the Typhoon,
reducing the chance of the reservoir accidentally falling off.
Mechanically I rate this machine much better than the Typhoon.

While
the Typhoon pumps out many more small bubbles, the bubbles from the
Jumbo Bubble machine vary in size from 2-inches to occasional
monsters 2-feet across. This variety in size, coupled with the fact
many of the bubbles have smaller bubbles inside them,

make
the Jumbo Bubble Machine much more entertaining than the Typhoon.

As
mentioned in the title of this review, The people at Gazillion
Bubbles have done it again: produced a first-class bubble machine
that really delivers the goods in terms of providing tons of
outstanding bubble entertainment.

DEFY
GRAVITY!
As light as they seem, bubbles are still heavier than air and will
fall to the ground and burst unless a breeze sustains them. This
makes using a bubble machine on calm days or inside difficult. Fans
placed under the machine and pointed upward don't seem to work,
create rapid swirling motions that don't look right with bubbles, and
cause many of them to break. Here is an easy solution. Buy a helium
balloon kit ($20 at most variety stores) and run a plastic tube from
the tank's nozzle to the exhaust port for the fan on the bubble
machine that inflates the soap bubbles. Turn the valve on low and
adjust the flow until the bubbles float with neutral buoyancy. I
found the flow rate needed to do this to be very low and a tank of
helium can last for hours.

Something
strange

I
took the output from a smoke generator, mixed it with helium from a
party-balloon kit and ran the combination into an automatic bubble
maker. The result was smoke-filled bubbles that floated instead of
sank. They looked like giant floating pearls.

Bubble
supply sources: A yellow pages
search on the Internet found 80 party supply or party rental
companies in the ten cities closest to me. Of these, only four
carried bubble machines or professional grade bubble solution. The
point here is that these devices can be hard to find and that
ordering over the Internet may be the best way to go. One rental
place carried a mid-grade machine for $34 a day (the same machine
costs $80 to purchase on the Internet.)

A
final
word:
Bubbles are great but be warned that they are messy. Solution
inevitably gets spilled, machines froth, and if the wind blows
against you, you'll get slimed with bubble goo. Still, in the long
run, as they climb high in the sky attracting smiles from anyone who
sees them, there can be no doubt that they are worth it.

Bubble
links:

The
most brightly colored bubbles I've ever used are Pustefix. You can
order them on-line from Tangent Toys at
http://store.yahoo.com/tangenttoys/pusref.html. These bubbles have
intense swirling colors that put all other brands to shame. They are
also very long lasting.

If
you are into "G" scale model railroads, there is a
Pustefix bubble-blowing car that really captures 2-to-4-year-olds' attention.

It
available on-line at: http://www.onlytrains.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=OT&Product_Code=94605&Category_Code=HF-AA

An
interesting and beautiful artform you might want to try if you enjoy
photography is capturing the swirling colors of Pustefix bubbles when
they are blown into various shapes.

The following
webpage, from which the images above were borrowed, has many more
examples: http://www.pustefix.de/templates/en/index.php

The
following sites will provide more detailed information on bubble
physics, just take their recommended bubble solution formulas with a
grain of salt.

Because
THIS
AND THAT is
a strictly non-commercial site I refrain from posting advertisements for
sites that market products for sale. This is one case where I'm
breaking that rule because it's such an outstanding idea. I want to
make it clear that I'm in no way connected with this company and
derive no financial gain from it in any way. They just market a great
product that I think many people would like to see and some of them,
if they own a retail store and want to attract people (especially
children) to their store, might find profitable to purchase. It's the Streetbear.

(photo borrowed from the
Streetbear site with permission)

This
is a three-foot tall, battery powered, automated bubble blowing bear
that someone with a store can mount outside the door. The bear, which
comes in several color schemes, the moving arm and drifting bubbles
all attract people to it. Outside a toy store it would be
particularly effective. Since the bubbles can drift for blocks it
would be like having an arrow hundreds of feet long pointing toward
the shop. It could be especially helpful to stores with small frontal
exposure or those around a corner and off the main customer walkway.
For more information about Streetbear and additional pictures of it
click on the link http://www.streetbear.com (but please don't
forget to come back and read the rest of my bubbles page.)

If
you love unusual bubble blowers then you should check out Marilyn
Doyle's site:

http://bubbleblowers.com

This
is a great webpage featuring pictures of hundreds of rare and exotic
bubble blowers.

(Please note: I have not used
streetbear myself and can offer no comments regarding reliability or
safety issues.)

Visit
Tom Noddy's
outstanding site at http://www.tomnoddy.com!

Tom
Noddy is a professional bubble blower who has delighted millions of
people around the world and even was a featured act on Johnny
Carson's Tonight show. I highly recommend visiting his outstanding site.

Mr.
Noddy very kindly sent me an email with some interesting comments
about bubble solutions. I'm posting them here for anyone who might be
interested in more than simply blowing single bubbles.

Wayne,

My name is Tom Noddy and I am a
professional bubble blower. I started 34 years ago playing with
bubbles and stayed with it. In the early 80s I performed my act,
Bubble Magic, on the Tonight Show and then I created a Bubble
Festival for the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. Now
there are a handful of other bubble performers and bubble exhibits at
all science musuems.

Right now I am in Berlin, Germany
performing in a Variete theater but I live in Santa Cruz, California.

I use Mr Bubbles for my act
because it is so flexible is that it is relatively weak. Glycerine
rich formulas make longer lasting bubbles but when I try to blow a
bubble inside of one (by giving it a quick blast of air from my
mouth) it is too rigid to stand up to that and snaps instead of
bending in on itself and forming other bubbles inside as I do in my
stage show.

Tom Noddy

Again,
I encourage everyone to visit his site at http://www.tomnoddy.com.
The pictures of some of the things he gets bubbles to do are unbelievable.